Hotel For DogsReview

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Time to put this dog down.

By Jack DeVries

Normally the summer months are the time for quickly produced games based on family friendly films. But many often forget that the early months of the year see a number of kids films that don't have the power to compete in the big leagues. And with them come games that likewise can't compete with the licensed games of the more successful months. Case in point: Hotel For Dogs for the Nintendo Wii and DS.

In Hotel For Dogs, players help Bruce, Andi, and their friends transform a vacant, run down hotel into a haven for stray dogs. Players have to help build gadgets for the dogs, take care of their needs, and rescue strays.

For the Wii version the game includes clips from the film to tell a modified version of the story. The DS version, however, has no cut scenes, and instead just jumps into each chapter. It makes the transitions confusing, since new characters and dogs will sometimes be added into the mix with no context. Both versions feature voice work for the main characters, though only a couple of them are the actual actors. It might not have been noticeable if they didn't talk directly after a clip from the movie where the voice clearly sounded different. It's nice that the voice work allows players that might have trouble reading to learn the controls faster, but the acting in it is pretty atrocious and none of the characters sound like they care. Gee, I'm sorry girl from Nancy Drew, are you too big of a star now to bother with emotion during your obligatory voice work? You don't sound worried about getting arrested for harboring strays, you sound mildly perturbed, like you have to bring your little brother with you to the movies.

I can't tell what kind of game Hotel for Dogs was trying to be. It's definitely not a virtual pet game, which would have made some sense. While you do feed, play and clean the dogs, it's just through a series of clicks, and involves no actual gameplay. It's also not really a simulation game, since the game is broken into chapters and there's no long term monitoring of the canines. There's really only two things you really do in the game, and neither of those are actually any fun.

Why actually play with dogs, when you can make a teddybear catapult out of junk?

The majority of Hotel for Dogs is a seek and find game. Bruce gives the player a list of parts he needs to build a certain gadget, and players must search the hotel to find them. The entire hotel is shown in a cutaway view, so players can see every room, as well as the dogs and people walking around. By clicking on a room, players enter the room and can search for specific parts. Because of the way the game is setup, the parts players need are already assigned to specific rooms. When they enter a correct room the screen displays the parts that need to be collected. The thing is, most of the items are pretty common and found in a majority of rooms, but the game won't let the player collect it. So if the blueprints call for a water jug, players may have to go through three different rooms, passing perfectly good water jugs, until they find the specific one the game arbitrarily wants.

To make matters even more frustrating, the Wii version is overly sensitive, and requires the hand icon's fingertip to be on just the right sliver of pixels before it will recognize the object. What should be the simple task of gathering objects becomes minutes of slowly moving the cursor over the screen, hoping that one of the nondescript blobs of brown or gray is the needed item.

Imprecise controls plague both versions. The trying to select a dog or human on the DS version is a total pain. If more than one character is in a room they'll block each other. Or sometimes it won't register that the player clocked a dog, and will go inside the room instead. Everything on the DS screen is so tiny and undetailed that it's hard to tell which gadgets are which, or where they even are.

The game's progression zips by and the whole game doesn't take much time at all. The chapters that don't require building gadgets are beaten within a couple minutes because the game is so easy. Even with a bunch of dogs it's not hard to make sure they're all happy. There's no motivating factor to the game. You just complete the tasks. Then build a new gadget and complete all the tasks again. Then get more dogs and do it all again. And it was never fun to begin with.

The Verdict

The main draw of the Hotel for Dogs film was all the cute and funny dogs doing wacky things like getting shoes out of vending machines. The game has none of that cuteness, save for a couple clips from the film itself. Instead you get a title that is barely a game at all. The only goals in it are to do the bare minimum to keep the dogs happy, then just move on. There is no visual, or gameplay rewards, and the game is over in a couple of hours. Hotel for Dogs is bad even for a low budget movie tie in. It doesn't seem to understand what a game is, and certainly doesn't understand what makes a game engaging for kids. Here's a tip for next time developers: No kids think hunting through dirty rooms for pipes is an enjoyable way to spend their time.